Archaeologists and the Dead

Howard Williams is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester. His research interests focus on medieval, post-medieval and contemporary mortuary archaeology, archaeologies of memory and the history of archaeology. His fieldwork includes Project Eliseg, investigating the context of the Pillar of Eliseg (Denbighshire, Wales). Howard has published over 70 book chapters and journal articles as well as edited books, most recently Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape (Boydell and Brewer, 2015) and he is Honorary Editor of the Archaeological Journal (2013-2017) and his monograph is titled Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (CUP, 2006).; Melanie Giles in an expert in the British and northern European Iron Age, specialising in funerary archaeology as well as Celtic art and artefacts. She is the author of 'A Forged Glamour: Landscape, identity and material culture in the Iron Age' (Windgather Press) and the forthcoming 'Bog Bodies: Face-to-face with the past' (Pen & Sword Press).

This book is about how archaeologists deal with the dead, and how the ancient dead in turn have a lasting affect upon us. It questions the purpose of working with human remains, not just in the UK, but wider afield on the Continent and in the US. Above all, it brings to the fore the many personal and professional challenges of working with the dead

ForewordMike Parker Pearson: ; 1 Melanie Giles and Howard Williams: Introduction: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society; Part 1: Investigating The Dead; 2 Sian Anthony: Questions Raised in Excavating the Recent Dead; 3 John McClelland and Jessica Cerezo-Roman: Personhood and Re-Embodiment in Osteological Practice; 4 Ulla Rajala: Separating the Emotions: Archaeological Mentalities in Central Italian Funerary Archaeology; 5 Andrew Pearson and Ben Jeffs: Slave Trade Archaeology and the Public: The Excavation of a 'Liberated African' Graveyard on St Helena; 6 Martin Brown: Habeas Corpus: Contested Ownership of Casualties of The Great War; 7 Faye Sayer and Duncan Sayer: Bones Without Barriers: The Social Impact of Digging the Dead; Part 2: Displaying the Dead; 8 Hedley Swain: Museum Practice and the Display of Human Remains; 9 Sarah Tatham: Displaying the Dead: The English Heritage Experience; 10 Nina Nordstrom: The Immortals: Prehistoric Individuals as Ideological and Therapeutic Tools in our Time; 11 Karen Exell: Covering the Mummies at the Manchester Museum: A Discussion of Authority, Authorship and Agendas in the Human Remains Debate; 12 Tiffany Jenkins: Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living; 13 Liv Nilsson Stutz: To Gaze Upon The Dead: The Exhibition of Human Remains as Cultural Practice and Political Process In Scandinavia and the United States; 14 Howard Williams: Firing the Imagination: Cremation in the Museum; Part 3: Public Mortuary Archaeology; 15 William Rathouse: Contemporary Pagans and the Study of the Ancestors; 16 Estella Weiss-Krejci: 'Tomb to Give Away': The Significance of Graves and Dead Bodies in Present-Day Austria; 17 Duncan Sayer and Tony Walter: Digging The Dead in a Digital Media Age; 18 Trevor Kirk: Writing About Death, Mourning and Emotion: Archaeology and Creativity; 19 Melanie Giles: Reconstructing Death: The Chariot Burials of Iron Age East Yorkshire; 20 Lynn Goldstein: Reflections on Intersections of Mortuary Archaeology and Contemporary Society